Gillian Jacobs' Favorite Street

Vanessa Stump (Wilshire); Jordan Strauss/Wireimage.com (Jacobs)

Wilshire is 16 miles long and runs east to west from Downtown LA to Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica.

CHRIS CLAYTON

Gillian Jacobs started out a Serious Actress. After graduating from Juilliard in 2004, she guest-starred on Law & Order: Criminal Intent and appeared in multiple plays. But it wasn’t until she landed a role on the NBC sitcom Community that the Pittsburgh native found her true calling: Serious Comedic Actress. As Britta, a self-righteous liberal activist who’s loathed by her fellow students at a Colorado community college, Jacobs brilliantly toes the line between cartoon and relatable loser. She’s Community’s beating, bleeding heart. Later this month, Jacobs brings her comic chops to the big screen in the Steve Carell film Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. The 29-year-old took a break from all this funny business to chat about LA’s Wilshire Boulevard, which she describes as “wonderful, weird and full of potholes.”

“I spend a great deal of time on Wilshire. Since it spans the entire city, you could spend years driving it and never know all the nooks and crannies. I love all the remnants of old LA that you can still see in the architecture. If you squint, you feel like you might be in the 1940s.”

Red Medicine. Photo by Vanessa Stump.

“When I first moved to Los Angeles, I didn’t know anyone and I would bring a book to the Los Angeles County Museum of Artand sit out on the lawn reading and people-watching. It’s nice to be around people in a city as isolating as Los Angeles.”

“I love Wilshire because there is a mix of great cultural institutions (LACMA and great art galleries), old Los Angeles architecture (Los Altos Apartments, the Wiltern Theatre) and glimpses of LA’s ethnic diversity (Korea Town and Little Ethiopia).”

“I love The HMS Bounty, a nautically themed bar in the Gaylord Apartments building. It is a weird little bar with an awesome mix of hipsters, rockers and old folks. For restaurants, I love the Red Medicine—a favorite of chefs.” 8400 Wilshire Blvd.

“Two other Wilshire places I love: the Music Hall movie theater—a sweet little movie theater that is still hanging in there—and MacArthur Park, a beautiful park that seems like it is from a different era. But don’t go to the park at night. I repeat—don’t go after the sun sets!”

MORE TO EXPLORE
From street food to tar pits, Wilshire is LA at its funkiest.

The food truck scene near the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Between 5700 and 5900 Wilshire Blvd.

“If someone were visiting Wilshire for the first time, I would tell them to go to the La Brea Tar Pits.” 5801 Wilshire Blvd.